The present invention relates to identification of keywords in documents. More particularly, the present invention relates to methods and apparatus for identifying World Wide Web document keywords of potential advertising value so that appropriate advertisements can be displayed.
Advertising based on keywords typed into search engine windows has been very successful in generating revenue for web sites such as Yahoo! and Yahoo! affiliates. In addition to using keywords to search for web pages, it is also possible to arrive at web pages by links from other pages or by typing in a URL, thereby presenting additional opportunities for generating advertising revenue. For example, a user may navigate to the URL www.yahoo.com, review the Yahoo! news section, and then selectively read news articles of interest by clicking on a summary of the story or a photograph of the story. In such instances, keywords have not been provided by the user.
In the absence of keywords provided by the user, an advertiser may have to resort to randomly advertising on web pages hoping to attract readers who may have an interest in the advertiser's products which may or may not be related to the web pages. To take advantage of this opportunity to better generate additional revenue offered by web page space where the user who has not arrived at a web page as a direct result of a search engine query, i.e., where the user has not provided keywords, an advertiser needs to select and target these ads as closely as possible to the user's potential interest, which may be indicated by the user's selection of the website and web pages. Such better targeted advertising will result in a better experience for the user, as well as greater income for advertisers and web publishers.
What is needed is an automated process that best associates ad links with the text of the web page being viewed by the user and therefore enables the website to place these ad links with a high probability that these ad links will be of interest and better serve the needs of the user without requiring keywords provided from the Web user. Intuition and imaginative application of mathematical methodologies are key to achieving this.